Creatives

Midjourney Launches V1: AI Videos for Creatives

Midjourney announces V1, an image-to-video model that converts uploaded or Midjourney-generated images into four five-second videos. Users can also animate external images by designating a start frame and guiding motion with a text prompt. Access remains via Discord and a web version. Pricing starts at $10/month for Basic, with Pro ($60) and Mega ($120) tiers offering Relax Mode and unlimited generations, while video generation currently costs about eight times more than an image. V1 provides automatic and manual animation, Motion Control with Low or High Motion, and outputs up to 21 seconds of video with a dreamy, artistic style. CEO David Holz describes V1 as a stepping stone toward realtime Open World simulations, with 3D models and real-time AI engines in the pipeline. The launch follows a Disney/Universal lawsuit over AI-generated characters; competitors cited include OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s Veo, and Adobe’s Firefly.

Creative IDs Explained: Standardising Ad Creatives

Creative IDs are strings attached to ad creatives to enable consistent identification as they move through the ad supply chain. They help buyers, sellers, and ad tech recognise the same creative across formats and exchanges, and can include metadata such as brand, product, media type, and campaign dates. Registries like Ad-ID, Clearcast, and EIDR create and manage these identifiers, with Ad-ID covering many media types, Clearcast focusing on TV, and EIDR spanning all audiovisual content. The ID can link to additional registry metadata, enabling quick recognition of the same ad and supporting competitive separation by avoiding ads from the same brand within a single ad break. Adoption remains uneven due to a lack of universal standardisation across digital media, prompting IAB Tech Lab to announce a framework to standardise creative IDs. Some publishers also create internal IDs. Ongoing growth faces challenges from increasing volumes of AI-generated content across media types.

Snap Rolls Out Multi-Format Delivery Of Ad Creatives – With AR Coming In Q2 2022

Snap announced a global rollout of multi-format delivery in its ads platform, enabling advertisers to buy and optimize across multiple formats within a single ad set that shares budget, bid type, targeting, and schedule. The initial rollout covers video formats such as Story Ads, Snap Ads, Collection Ads, and First Commercial ads, with plans to add self-serve augmented reality formats for multi-format delivery by Q2 2022. The update uses machine learning to optimize delivery for the best-performing placements within a campaign objective and mirrors similar moves by Google and Facebook to automate placements. The change is framed as helping performance advertisers and as a response to privacy-driven measurement changes from iOS 14.5, with Snap relying on a mix of SKAdNetwork and its own first-party signals while increasing emphasis on the creative. Peter Naylor, Snap’s VP of Sales for the Americas, said the trend is toward measurable results and broader inventory unlocked by ML.